EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK: Is the SBC Report a Defining Moment?

Editor’s Note:  This week begins a new feature at MinistryWatch.  Most Saturdays we will feature this “Editor’s Notebook” column.  MinistryWatch President Warren Smith will comment on one or more stories in the week’s news, adding an additional perspective or, sometimes, a behind-the-scenes look at how the story came to be. 

SBC Moment of Truth.  Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana put it bluntly:  “For decades, a handful of leaders in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination treated sexual abuse survivors as enemies of the church, denied responsibility for the actions of local churches, and downplayed the number of sexual abuse cases in those churches, all in the name of protecting the institution, according to a report released Sunday, May 22.”

He’s right.  The RNS story goes on to say: “It reveals a callous disregard for abuse survivors and a relentless commitment to protecting the denomination from liability.”  Perhaps most troubling of all, “Guidepost Solutions found that SBC leaders were well aware of abuse cases in the church and even compiled a list of offenders but took no steps to find out if alleged abusers remained in ministry, instead focusing on protecting the SBC from liability.

There’s so much to this report, nearly 300 pages. That it’s tough to know where to begin or end, but here are a few thoughts.

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First of all, you can read the entire report for yourself.  (Find it here.)  And if you are a Southern Baptist pastor or staff member, or a deacon or other leader in the church, I strongly recommend it.  This is a report that all Southern Baptists and even all evangelicals need to face up to.  It’s tough reading in places, but it’s the sort of thing we dare not look away from.

Secondly, I think it’s important to note that if you are saying to yourself, “Well, I’m not a Southern Baptist, so this doesn’t concern me,” then you are dead wrong.  That’s bad theology, for one thing.  It ignores that we are all a part of the Body of Christ.

But on a purely pragmatic level, this report is a warning shot for everyone in church and ministry leadership.  We are now all officially on notice.  If you are a church leader and you are not taking proactive steps to put abuse policies in place, or to review the ones you have, I think that means you don’t really understand the importance of this moment.

It’s also important to note that this story is not over, not by a long shot.

Not by a long shot.  Within the Southern Baptist Convention – which I grew up in – there’s an old and somewhat cynical joke often told about the denomination’s leaders.  It goes like this: “When all is said and done, a lot more was said than was done.”

But this time is different.  I think this report will end up being a defining moment for the SBC, but only if the leaders of the denomination now act.  I see signs that they are, but it’s going to be hard.  The report highlighted some issues that were not merely a result of systems and structures, though there were plenty of those.  The report talked about the overall culture of the SBC, and that’s going to be hard to change.  

The great business guru Peter Drucker once said that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”  Changing the culture will likely mean hastening the departure of an entire generation of leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Journalism Matters.  One more note about the SBC story:  In the past two-and-a-half years MinistryWatch has done about 150 stories that have at least some mention of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Many of those have been written by Bob Smietana of Religion News Service, who we partner with here at MinistryWatch.  

I would also add that the Houston Chronicle’s massive investigative story on the Texas Southern Baptists broke this story open a couple of years ago.  I mention that to say this:  hard-nosed independent journalism was essential to this story.  Given what we know now about the SBC, I really don’t think we would be seeing the transparency and accountability we are now finally seeing without these independent news sources.  

I know it sounds like shameless self-promotion to say so, but it also happens to be true.